Y’all. I gotta be honest. I’m not sure about 2016. We may need a do over.
Something big happens, I start thinking about it, and before I can even finish, some asshole shows up with yet another AR-15. I can’t even process that one yet.
If I can’t make crazy stop happening, I guess I’m going to have to embrace being behind.
So here’s what I was in the middle of before Sunday, June 12th:
Muhammad Ali (AKA: Cassius Clay) died last week. He’d always been a favorite of mine, representing that idealized period before I was born, the heyday of the 1950s and 60s, the sanitized and oft revered decades where us white folks could support our families on one (man’s) income while mothers stayed home, wiping out the new Fridgdaire and hosting monthly bridge parties. A time when our children didn’t retreat with an iPad to their bedrooms but instead, huddled around the family radio (or TV if you were lucky) listening/watching Cassius fight.
Of course it wasn’t quite the same for Cassius and his community in Louisville, KY. Both of his parents worked, his father as a billboard painter, his mother as a (white woman’s) housekeeper. It never was the same for black folks. Still isn’t.
When Muhammad Ali was drafted into the Vietnam war he declared he was a conscientious objector saying, among other things, “They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they never put no dogs on me. How can I shoot those poor people?” He continued, “I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation…” He was sentenced to five years in prison for that particular fighting stance.
He wasn’t talking about those poor, pitiful Viet Cong. He meant those POOR people. Poor like he’d been. Like most of the people he’d been raised with had been. People brown like he was. He couldn’t see marching off to fight a rich man’s war against other poor people.
The man knew what he was talking about.
About a year ago I wrote a post about feeding my large family on a small budget. I thought it was the most dry and inconsequential thing I’d ever committed to paper. It went viral. Shows what I know.
Since then I’ve gotten hundreds of comments, thousands if you consider the ones left on articles that reference my post. For the most part, those comments fall into two categories:
- Thank you, it’s not perfect but it helps.
- You ignorant irresponsible welfare mom, you have too many kids and you feed them too many carbs.
But then in January, while stranded in Maine, I got an entirely different kind of comment. It’s taken me this long to decide what to do with it. Here it is:
Try feeding people on a social worker salary, about twenty grand a year less than a teacher salary. I am so sick and tired of hearing about how poorly paid teachers are when there are whole categories of people with college degrees who make a LOT less money. Even adjunct faculty at the local state college barely make minimum wage while local elementary teachers are around 50K a year. Probation officers are another group who are way more poorly paid than teachers and just as educated. And what about people who never got around to going to college or went to college but can only find steady work in fast food or poorly paid service industry jobs? Teacher salaries and benefits sound really good to them@! It is very off putting to hear someone complaining that she has to budget because she is living on a ‘teacher’s salary’. I think the only people who get teary eyed over that are teachers and people who make six figures and feel guilty over it. The rest of us po’ folks are not real impressed.
-Anonymous
Um. OUCH.
Wide-eyed, I slid my phone to Mike, who read it and told me to delete it. “It’s rude. Don’t waste your time.”
But I couldn’t.
It wasn’t just the misconstruction (if someone made 20k less than Mike in his first year of teaching they’d make $5,000/year, after 13 years – $25,000) but also the blatant poor people vs. poor people rhetoric.
Why attack me because you think I’m not as poor as you? Why pit social workers against teachers? Aren’t we all in the same boat? Aren’t we all doing good work that we’re proud of for ridiculously low compensation? Aren’t we all struggling to pay mortgages/rent for the same price that some people blow on a weekend vacation?
We’d do well to heed Ali’s example today.
Today when politicians are trying to vie one poor population against another. Today, when Donald Trump is overtly or not so overtly trying to pit poor whites against poor blacks and poor hispanics. Today, when once again, rich people are trying to tell poor people that other poor people are the problem.
Let me be clear: Poor people are never going to be the problem unless we stop bickering, get together behind our common good, and make ourselves, as a unit, a problem.
And why should we? Why make trouble? Why not accept our lot or try to make ourselves better? After all, rich people are rich because they work harder, sacrifice more, delay gratification, refuse to go into debt, right?
Maybe. Sometimes.
Just like poor people are poor because they refuse to work their way up from the bottom. Or they drop out of school, spend more than they earn, refuse to plan for the future, don’t even try.
Maybe. Sometimes.
But most of time you have ordinary people working extraordinarily hard. Getting up in the dark to get their kids to school, going to work, coming home, making dinner, checking homework, paying bills, falling into bed.
And some of those people make $30,000 a year and some of them make $300,000.
Knowing that, maybe we should all go for the $300,000 jobs: surgeons, high profile attorneys, hedge fund managers, CEOs of major corporations.
Yes, but who would teach our children, cut our meat, make our art, or protect our streets?
The reality is, until we, as a society, value work equally, we need people who are willing to work hard for little.
But those of us who do work hard for little should not, even for a second, consider each other the enemy. If there’s gonna be an us against them, at least we should not accept an us against us.
Here’s the truth: I have poor friends and I have wealthy friends. For the most part, the poor people I know would be flabbergasted by an additional $30,000 a year. My wealthy friends would be stunned by such a reduction. Money, like time, expands to fill whatever space allotted to it.
I know no Trumps. I’ve never met a Vanderbilt or an Ingram, those for whom $30,000 equals a dinner party, a ski weekend or perhaps a sixteen-year-old’s first car. I have, however, met a whole lot of people who feel like they are just getting by, some making $20,000 a year, some making $200,000. And yes, there is a difference. But not nearly the difference that exists between those people and folks making $500,000,000 a year. If there’s gotta be a “them” it’s them, not me, not you. (Of course if you’re reading this blog and you do make half a billion dollars a year, please, be a patron. Slumming is fun.)
So, Dear Anonymous, your comment has finally been moderated, please consider this my response. In the meantime, like Cassius Clay, this particular “po’ folk” refuses to travel 10,000 miles, or even one sentence across the Internet to fight other poor people.
Mary Clayton
I’ve never understood the anger that people in lower income brackets have toward each other. I know so many people who are outraged at the idea of paying workers a $15 minimum wage. How dare they make that much money? Why should someone who is uneducated make $15 an hour? As far as I can understand it is because they are making close to that amount and it is upsetting to them to think they have worked so hard to earn so little in comparison to those people.
I live in Seattle. Our housing market has become terrifyingly inflated. An 800 sq base condo is selling easily for 500k. Salaries are all over the board if you are in the tech industry but everyone else is stagnant. Teachers did not get a huge increase because of incoming revenue (we are a no income tax state only sales), everyday college educated and non college educated people are pretty much making the same wages. It’s rough. It means Seattle has a housing crisis.
I’m lucky. My spouse works for the evil corps and we benefit for now. The stress affects his health but we are hoping it will give us a chance to get to a better place financially. The funny thing is as a family of 6 we struggle with a six figure salary. We live in a modest house, we drive newer cars but they are not flashy (van and a Mazda 2), I shop exclusively at goodwill, st.vincentdepauls, large consignment or extreme sales. I buy groceries at the outlet store. All of our furniture is second hand except our mattresses. We have been on one vacation in five years and it was too a family reunion.
Basically, we are tight. I don’t work because I cannot. I’m working on improving my health but even if I could work my income would go straight to childcare.
So, while I see people I know get outraged because regular people need to more finances to live on I laugh. Everyone, in a certain income bracket ie not the 1% needs a boost. Our incomes have become stagnant and it is our right to be angry at the system and not reach other over it. We can make a choice to change and we can choose each other over corporate welfare.
I’ve rambled a lot. My message is simple. In the grand scheme of things people need a livable wage. Those that don’t get that need to pull their heads out of their asses. I’m tired of seeing children being walked home to their tent underneath a freeway while Teslas, RRs, Mazaratis, and the whole rainbow of porches speed by over head.
You, Jenn are not the enemy. I’m not the enemy. Wage stagnation is and some weird culture around envy.
I’m going to go put on my second-hand pair of croc ballet flats and grab my canvas Trader Joe bag I’m using as a purse (also GW) and go pick up my friend who works 40+ hours a week and makes $13 an hour with no kids and lives on top ramen because she pays 1000 for a bedroom in a house not including utilities and needs to use my washer.
If we do not stand up. If we do not make our voices heard. We will never be counted. If we don’t do it who will?
Steve Walls
Well said, Jen. Indeed, it isn’t even those who make $500,000 a year who are the problem, although they could be more generous. It’s the fact that 20 people in this country (according to Bernie Sanders) control more wealth than the bottom 150 million. Yep, you read that right – take all the resources of the bottom 150 million people and it almost equals what 20 individuals have. Yes, it is time for a Jubilee. We should be talking unabashedly about redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor, because ever since the late seventies, it has been redistributed from the poor to the rich.
Jen
Indeed, Steve. Well said. Though I wasn’t talking about those who make $500,000 a year (an impossible dream for 50% of the population), but those who make $500,000,000 a year. I wish there was a way to legislate morality and fairness, but alas, there is not. I simply cannot understand people having so much more than they need and still being unwilling to filter down into community programs, arts programs, or just pure generosity.
Conservatives talk about how maintaining wealth for the top percent leads to better opportunities for everyone, but it’s simply not true. We get used to having what we are used to having. Tax breaks included. We don’t want to let go. In this way we are like children, unwilling to share our box of toys with others who have none, though we have more than we can really enjoy.
Amanda
Is it weird that I clapped while reading this?
Well said, ma’am.
JB Telstad
I wish “redistribution of wealth” really worked. It doesn’t. Ask the Russians. It was a wonderful idea and a huge failure. The poor still got poorer, hungrier, colder. Do you think they were happier under socialism? Income does not seem to be the problem. What we “need” is the problem. Rampant materialism, and greed are the problem. Envy is the problem. Do you really need a brand new cell phone? Do we really need cell phones at all?
I am often amazed that the people who have the least are always the most generous with the little that they have. Maybe because they know what it is like to have nothing?
What if we poured all the energy currently spent on dividing us into “us vs. them” (social workers vs. teachers, white poor vs. not-white poor, ISIS vs. everyone, Democrats vs. Republicans, Trump vs. whoever, and $500,000 vs. those who have a few more zeros added on) and worry about our own business (vs. what someone else makes). There is always going to be someone in front of you (making more money) and someone behind. No matter how fast you drive, someone will get there before you. Stop drawing lines between people. ALL lines. Stop comparing the “value” of your job, car, house, family, religion, education, LIFE against the perceived value of someone else’s. Lots of people have more than me, some certainly have less. There should be no “them”, only “us”; after all, aren’t we all a “them” to someone? We are all different, but we are all HERE. And life is NOT fair…no one promised it would be. Most people are doing the best they can with the hand they were dealt and everyone has hardships. Hating someone because they are rich is as silly as hating someone because they are poor (or red, or a gender, or tall, or old or….)Maybe the first step is practicing inclusion? Instead of drawing lines? Who decided that money was the yardstick that everyone must measure themselves by? Maybe it’s not really about money at all?
Just a thought.
Mel
Mouth wide open, hands in air! Teachers where we live make about 23k-30k a year. I think the only place that they make 50k is CT where the cost of living is outrageous (compared to NC). I never understood that comment from that person myself.
You replied well my friend. Could not have said it better and I’m in total agreement.